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Wednesday, 7 March 2012

Bon Appetit

Bon Appétit!

It started in England. Local specialities and the
chance to try new foods. Delicious and many flavoured ice creams in Devon
during the summer, Mackerel bap and chips in Weymouth, sat on a sunny wall by
the harbour, a Chinese buffet with friends in Portsmouth where the children
discovered crispy fried seaweed.

Of course experiencing the local
dishes is part of the fun of travelling. We tried Croque Monsieur/Madam and big
pots of mussels and seafood pizza in St Malo. In Cherbourg and Portbail we had hot merguez (a
North African sausage) in bread. We’ve tried all sorts of cheeses (including
goat) and sausages from the markets and we’ve brought baguettes from various boulangeries. We have bought and
emptied a crab but couldn’t quite bring ourselves to buy a live one yet. We’ve
had croissants and pain au chocolat
for breakfast a few times and discovered sweet rolls are ideal for travelling
days. Brittany
seems to specialise in adding as much butter and sugar as possible to
everything it serves. We’ve had lots of delicious cakes and biscuits and the
other day Mark and the boys made some kouign amman
cakes from a French recipe literally dripping in butter. Other delights we’ve
found include boudin noir (blood sausage), golden apples, crevettes, peanut
flavoured crisps and of course a few bottles of wine!

Mussels

We’ve also had to experiment as far as the cooking went. We
have a four ring gas hob, gas oven, and two kettles – one to go on the gas hob
and an electric one so we can have cup
of tea whether we have external (shore) power or not. With a smaller and slower
oven, no fridge/freezer and shopping being carried, planning had to be put into
meals to change them to adjust to our new life but without being too different
for the children at first, we had to break them in gently! Now they enjoy
coming to the super Marché or the local market and looking to see what we can
find. It’s very much a case of trial and error and we are pleased
that the children, especially the older two, have really embraced the ‘try it
at least once’ attitude. Their appetites have also increased hugely since we
have been on the boat.

We have had no problems finding fresh fruit and veg yet,
pomelos really do seem to last for a few weeks and still not go off, we have
heard them described as ‘natures tinned fruit’. I have got a stock of vitamin
tablets just in case but hopefully they won’t be needed at all. In England we
used dried milk and very quickly became used to it, forgetting on occasion to
warn visitors that their cup of tea would be very hot, in France UHT milk is
used much more widely than fresh milk, it is very easy to get hold of so we
have changed to that for now.

Without a fridge fresh meat/cheese could only be eaten on a
shopping day in the summer although we could get away with buying meat/cheese
for a couple of days over the winter, especially when the inside of the boat
reached temperatures normally associated with a fridge! Tinned meats are great
store cupboard staples and we stock up whenever we go shopping on whatever is
available locally. Burgers in a tin were so disgusting that we vowed never to
buy another but chicken in white sauce is a good base for many dishes and we’ve
recently discovered Tartiflette
in France
which is sliced potato, lardons and a nice sauce, lovely when oven baked. The
green and white Asda tins are slowly being replaced with Carrefour arrows.

Medium sized buckets

Big buckets

We have got plenty of space for storage and have large
buckets filled with pasta, rice, various beans and other dried goods, we also
try to keep a stock of things like chopped tomato, sweet corn and other useful
tins as well as some slightly more obscure things we have collected like
uncooked poppadums and prawn crackers. We have a store of bread flour so
we can be self sufficient in food for quite a while. We have enough British tea bags (yes, I know tea is not
British) to last for a long time – we do like a good mug of tea but needed to
request delivery of a new bottle of Lea and Perrins and some Shreddies from our
parents when they visited recently! The dog doesn’t seem to mind her French
food, the bag we got looks similar to the Tesco stuff she is used to and
disappears quickly enough when put in her bowl.

So that’s our adventures with food so far. I hope that as we
travel around we will get to sample many other delights. Cheers for now!

Freedom

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